Hurricane names Harvey, Irma and Maria officially 'retired'

Puerto Rico is facing a galloping mental health crisis. Besides working to restore electricity and basic needs to residents after Hurricane Maria’s destructive run here, state officials are also scrambling to meet the mental health of its residents.
Carrie Cochran/USA TODAY Network, Rick Jervis/USA TODAY

Floodwaters from Hurricane Harvey surround homes in Port Arthur, Texas, on Aug. 31, 2017. Harvey is one of four hurricanes from 2017 to have its name retired.(Photo11: Gerald Herbert, Associated Press)

Goodbye and good riddance. The names of last year's monster hurricanes — Harvey, Irma and Maria — will never be used again after they were officially "retired" Thursday.

The hurricanes killed hundreds of people, caused more than $200 billion in damage and brought misery and hardship to millions of Americans. The World Meteorological Organization also retired Nate, a hurricane that hit central America as a tropical storm, killing dozens, then hit the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Harvey, a Category 4 hurricane that hit Texas with winds of 132 mph, killed 68 people and dumped historic amounts of rain on Houston. With damage of $126 billion, it's the second-costliest hurricane in U.S. history, behind Katrina.

Irma lashed the Caribbean and the U.S., making seven separate landfalls as it tore across the islands and the Southeast U.S. A Category 5 storm at its height with winds of 178 mph, Irma killed more than 100 people and devastated the island of Barbuda and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Hurricane Maria, with winds of 172 mph at its height, ravaged the island of Dominica as a Category 5 on Sept. 19 and later devastated Puerto Rico as a high-end Category 4 hurricane, producing catastrophic damage to the U.S. territory.

WMO Hurricane Committee has retired Harvey, Irma, Maria and Nate from the list of rotating names because of the death and destruction they caused during the 2017 Atlantic season pic.twitter.com/MIbLJgSZuV

The meteorological organization retired the four names from its rotating list used for hurricanes and tropical storms in light of the death and destruction the storms caused.

The organization reuses storm names every six years in lists for the Atlantic and eastern Pacific basins. The nation hardest hit by a storm can request its name be removed because the storm was so deadly or costly that future use of the name would be insensitive.

The removal also avoids confusion caused by a future storm having the same name. In 2005, five storm names, including Katrina, were retired — the most for a single season.

The list from 2017 will be used again in 2023. The organization will replace Harvey with Harold, Irma with Idalia and Maria with Margot. Nate will be replaced by Nigel.

This year's Atlantic hurricane season officially begins June 1 — with Alberto.

In all, 86 hurricane names have now been retired. When a storm name is retired from the Atlantic's list of names, member countries of the meteorological organization from that region select a new name. For Atlantic storms, the name can be French, Spanish or English, reflecting the languages of residents of countries that could be hit by a hurricane.

In 1953, the U.S. began using female names for hurricanes and, by 1979, male and female names were used. The names alternate between male and female.

There are no Q, U, X, Y or Z names because of the lack of usable names that begin with those letters. If more than 21 storms form in one season, such as in 2005, the Greek alphabet is used to name the additional storms.

There are also separate lists for typhoons in the western Pacific and tropical cyclones in Australia and the Indian Ocean.

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1900 Galveston hurricane-- A large part of the city of Galveston, Texas, is reduced to rubble after being hit by a surprise hurricane Sept. 8, 1900. More than 6,000 people were killed and 10,000 left homeless from the storm. AP

1935 Labor Day hurricane--The wreckage of an 11-car passenger train that was derailed by a hurricane in Sept. 1935 lays on its side in the Florida Keys. The Hurricane Center says no wind measurements were available from the core of this small hurricane, which was a Category 5 storm when it reached the Florida Keys. The storm was blamed for 408 deaths and caused an estimated $6 million (1935 dollars) in damage. AP

2004 Hurricane Charley--Captiva, Fla. resident, Sherrill Sims, right, gets a hug from fellow resident and friend Mary Bates on Aug. 18, 2004, after seeing each other for the first time since Hurricane Charley ripped through the area. ANDREW WEST, News-Press

2005 Hurricane Katrina--Jason Davis finds an American flag in a neighborhood area in Biloxi, Miss. on Aug. 31, 2005. Davis lost his house which was completely swept away accept for the front steps in the hurricane. JACK GRUBER, USA TODAY

2012 Hurricane Sandy-- Members of the Duffy family search for belonging in what remains of their home in Breezy Point, N.Y. on Oct. 31, 2012. They found a photo album and a fire extinguisher. JENNIFER S. ALTMAN, for USA TODAY